It is a bright Wednesday morning in May. My son, T, a Year 8 pupil, should be at school and I should be working, but instead we are playing tennis. We are also listening to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Dire Straits because he’s supposed to be studying the play in class so I figure I
I’ve always wanted children. Friends sometimes tease me about my broodiness, apparently uncommon among single 29-year-old men. But unless I’ve accidentally knocked someone up in the past few months, I’m going to be an older parent than mine were by the time they had me. I suppose that’s normal. The average age at which couples
Boris Johnson When Jeffrey Bernard died in 1997, it seemed possible that we would never again have a regular Low Life columnist in The Spectator – or no one half as good. We needed someone who could match Taki for appalling frankness, for saying the unsayable; but not about the denizens of Gstaad or New
A world without Jeremy Clarke is a glummer place. The author of this magazine’s Low Life column for 23 years, who died on Sunday morning, was a spirited writer of the old school. He loved a rollicking good time, a beautifully turned phrase, a good gossip, casting an observant eye over life’s absurdities, and England.
Wrexham had never seen anything like it: thousands of fans cheering their team as an open-top bus made its way through the city’s streets. On board, Wrexham’s footballers celebrated their side’s promotion back to the English football league. The club’s star owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, were there too – and with them, as
Manchester is desperate for workers. There are 40,000 jobs advertised in the city at the moment, at every pay grade. Ann Summers wants a stockroom assistant (£10.70 an hour), or you could invigilate exams at £14 an hour or post videos on TikTok for £20 an hour. Sellcheck Chemicals is offering up to £75,000 a
The Grand Hotel sits on the outskirts of Taipei, at the edge of Yangmingshan national park. Overlooking the city, the 14-storey building is designed like a Chinese palace. It was built in the 1950s to host dignitaries when Taiwan was under authoritarian rule. Today it operates as a five-star hotel and is open to tours
Two mass shootings in Serbia have left 17 people dead, many of them children, and there are protests on the streets of Belgrade. Demonstrators blame Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vucic, and so Vucic has his own series of anti-gun rallies planned and has ordered a swift crackdown on gun ownership, a ‘practical disarmament’. But Vucic
Here is your dilemma. Imagine you have a university-age daughter who has developed kidney failure. She needs a transplant. You know that the best results are obtained when the operation is performed at a transplant unit with access to the best immunosuppressive drugs, when the kidney is taken from a living donor, and especially when
The contrast couldn’t be greater. In Britain a wealthy cabinet minister goes on television to boast of how he is installing a heat pump in his home – something his government is proposing to force on millions of British homeowners over the next few years in spite of them costing many thousands of pounds more
Vilnius In July, Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte will welcome Nato leaders to Vilnius for one of the most important summits in the alliance’s history. Top of the agenda will be how to help Ukraine push back Vladimir Putin’s forces. But a more thorny problem will be whether to formally offer membership to Kyiv –
‘Hello, my current occupation is police officer,’ says Dex in a thick Danish accent. ‘It seems very adventurous and exciting to do, and to make a difference for the people I meet out in the world.’ Dex is just over 13 stone, around six feet tall, has very fair skin and blue eyes. His favourite
Everyone knows F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line from the end of his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon: ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ But Fitzgerald wasn’t talking about second chances. He meant that, unlike in a traditional play – where Act I presents a problem, Act II reveals the complications and Act III
One of the most appalling and perplexing atrocities committed by Vladimir Putin has been the abduction of Ukrainian children. At least 20,000 boys and girls, some just babies, have been separated from their parents and placed in Russian camps, orphanages or foster homes. They are portrayed in Russia as grateful orphans being saved from ‘Kyiv’s
What better cocktail to try in Kyiv than ‘Lesya Ukrainka’s Dream’? Born in 1871, Ukrainka was a fierce feminist, poet, titan of Ukrainian literature and the angel-faced symbol of independent nationhood. In this time of war, writers like Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko, the great 19th-century poet persecuted by the Russians, a man who has come
‘Kilicdaroglu’ is a pronunciation nightmare for the non-Turkish. Yet after this Sunday’s presidential elections, international news presenters, who have struggled for 20 years with President Erdogan’s soft ‘g’, might have to work harder to articulate the name of the social democrat leader of opposition. ‘You may call him Mr Kemal [his first name] until he
Last month, a trailer for the new Exorcist film – the scariest trailer ever, apparently – was released. The Exorcist: Believer isn’t out until Friday 13 October – just in time for Halloween – but Hollywood movies about demons are legion. This one follows The Pope’s Exorcist (released on Good Friday), in which Russell Crowe
The last time a monarch acceded to the throne, her subjects had to wait ten months to hear her speak. Elizabeth II was only 25 and had her whole adult life before her. The public were more patient in those days and the media was an entirely different creature, moving at a slower pace. It
Recent births and deaths in my family have got me thinking about the family tree. A few years ago, we pieced together a remarkably discernible lineage that goes right back to William the Conqueror, or at least his alleged Anglo-Saxon concubine, and various Norman knights who used to own much of England. And it is
Ten minutes before I meet Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’, the New York Times announces he’s leaving Google. After decades working on artificial intelligence, Hinton now believes it could wipe out humanity. ‘It is like aliens have landed on our planet and we haven’t quite realised it yet because they speak very good English,’